"Let us turn now to the story. A child is
born in an obscure village. He is brought up in another obscure
village. He works in a carpenter shop until he is thirty, and then for
three brief years is an itinerant preacher, proclaiming a message and
living a life. He never writes a book. He never holds an office. He
never raises an army. He never has a family of his own. He never owns a
home. He never goes to college. He never travels two hundred miles from
the place where he was born. He gathers a little group of friends about
him and teaches them his way of life. While still a young man, the tide
of popular feeling turns against him. One denies him; another betrays
him. He is turned over to his enemies. He goes through the mockery of a
trial; he is nailed to a cross between two thieves, and when dead is
laid in a borrowed grave by the kindness of a friend."

"Those are the facts of his human life. He
rises from the dead. Today we look back across nineteen hundred years
and ask, What kind of trail has he left across the centuries? When we
try to sum up his influence, all the armies that ever marched, all the
parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned are
absolutely picayune in their influence on mankind compared with that of
this one solitary life…"

by Dr James Allan
Francis in “The Real Jesus and Other Sermons” © 1926 by the Judson
Press, Philadelphia